“Levitating”

“When everything is said and done, are you really down?” Xenia Rubinos wants to know. So do rapper Sammus and singer Olga Bell, her collaborators on the new single “Levitating.” The song’s central question is aimed squarely at privileged progressives, those performers of wokeness who can’t take criticism, and whose silence can speaks volumes. The track was written after Tune-Yards’ Merrill Garbus invited Rubinos to appear on her Red Bull Radio show C.L.A.W. (Collaborative Legions of Artful Womxn), and she brought along tourmates Sammus and Bell to further the chemistry they’d developed from sharing a stage. The result is inspiring, with each artist rising to meet the other.

Olga Bell, who handles the production, borrows Rubinos and Sammus’ soulful vibe, with a glowing piano melody, swirling atmospherics, and a drum pattern that morphs to match each artist’s cadence. Sammus deploys her incisive wit, comparing “well-meaning liberals, left-leaning folks” who call protests riots to McDonald’s McGriddles (“You sweet on the outside, salty in the middle”). Rubinos flips a nimble Spanish-to-English flow with fluency, shouting out the lucha libres, chulas, and brujas—the “American dreamers...torn apart by these United States.” Ultimately, the song’s triumph lies not in its commentary, but rather, in the cool, calm, and collected way they shrug it all off. “Levitating” is evidence these women aren’t going anywhere but up.